Comparison between The Selfish Giant and Thor: The Dark World

Production:

Similarities

Both mainly filmed in the UK, although Thor was also filmed in Iceland
Both were shot in 2.35:1 aspect ratio

Differences

Thor had a budget of $170 million, The Selfish Giant had £1.2 million
The Selfish Giant is an English film, Thor is a Hollywood film
All the cast for TSG are English, whereas most of the Thor cast are not
Thor is solely produced and distributed by Walt Disney, TSG is a film from the BFI, Film4 and Moonspun Films

Audience and Genre:

Similarities

None

Differences

Thor is part of the Marvel Comics, an ongoing franchise of film and comic books. TSG is a one off movie
Thor will already have a massive database of fans, whereas TSG will not have a fanbase
Thor is a sci-fi action movie, TSG is an indie, british social realism film.
The target market for Thor was Marvel Comic fans of an age between 12-25. The Selfish Giant was aimed at an older audience, predominantly british
TSG is a 15 rated film, Thor is a 12A

Marketing and distribution:

Similarities

Both films got similar ratings, 7.3 for Thor and 7.4 for The Selfish Giant
Strong opening weekends in cinema

Differences

TSG made £132,000, Thor made £8,000,000.
TSG was screened on 35 screens on it's opening weekend whereas Thor was screened on 510 screens (UK)
Thor grossed approximately £8.6m in opening weekend, TSG grossed £132000
Amazon best-sellers rank: TSG - 1219 in DVD and Blu-Ray, Thor - 17 in DVD and Blu-Ray

Technology question

Production:
Imax cameras - international space station
Gravity, special effects and animation
The Hobbit, 48 frames per second
Smaller handheld digital cameras (cinema worthy)
Digital film 3D - 4D in the future?
Blue/green screens, actors no longer needed to go to location shoots

Distribution and marketing:
Twitter campaigns, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Audi charity)
Devil Baby and Carrie - pranks to advertise the film
McDonald's happy meal toys
Critic reviews from film festivals
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire teaming up with Subway
Competitions - The Lego Movie trailer
Merchandising
Lego film - Lego toys
Websites
Posters
Press release conferences
Fan made videos
Muppets and Ron Burgundy going to press releases in character
Facebook pages
Radio interviews

Exhibition and consumption:
Frozen - sing along (two times the amount of tickets sold)
Digital files
Basildon Empire - the biggest empire, 6 studio screens for indie films and critically acclaimed showings, 12 studio screens for blockbusters

Links with Exchange:
YouTube films
1D film at 02
UltraViolet app
BFI Player
Curzon Online
DVDs and Blu-Ray

Exchange:
Fan sites
Blogs
Video Games
Apps
Netflix/ Lovefilm - no wifi needed
File sharing - popcorn time

Positives:
Easier/cheaper to watch/access films
People who can't go to the cinema can still watch their favourite films
Plays, opera and sports films released in cinemas
Improve efficiency/maximise profit
Avoiding add on costs
More cinema goers

Negatives:
Piracy/ film sharing
DVDs die
Less profit overall

Question 2 of the exam

One of these things will come up!
Media ownership (the big 6, who owns what)
Synergy and cross media convergence
New media technology
Spread of technology
Technology convergence (media gadgets)
Big industries targeting British audiences
Your media consumption

Popcorn time

Popcorn Time Is Hollywood’s Worst Nightmare, And It Can’t Be Stopped

Imagine for a moment if Napster were cloned hundreds of times. If there were a NapsterStanford, a NapsterMIT, or a Napster for your high school completely independent from, yet just as powerful as, the original. Imagine what would have happened if Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker had released the source code, allowing any developer to essentially copy and build upon his software. Imagine if Napster were open source.

The RIAA would have fought a war on a thousand fronts. And lost.

Video piracy is on the verge of having its Napster moment. A piece of software appeared last week called Popcorn Time. It makes watching pirated movies as easy as firing up Netflix. Everything is free. There’s no mess or fuss — you press play.

Popcorn Time makes it as easy to watch pirated content as Napster did to download songs. It’s a nightmare for Hollywood.

The creators of the original Popcorn Time stated emphatically that it’s perfectly legal to run the app because neither you nor the app “hold” the movies – the Internet holds them. Once installed, however, the program throws a warning screen forcing the user to essentially agree that it’s a bit shady.

Yet strictly speaking, piracy is as much stealing as is taking a photograph of art with the intent to reproduce it. Is it wrong? Yes. Does the practice speak to a larger issue? Absolutely.

The current state of movie piracy is centered around archaic distribution. Consumers want content on demand for a fair price. The runaway success of Netflix, Amazon Video and Hulu proves that. Yet these legitimate services often lack top-tier content. Want to watch a sequel to a blockbuster or a knock-off Disney movie? Go to Netflix. Want to watch the blockbuster? Buy the Blu-ray or download it from The Pirate Bay. Or wait months until it shows up on HBO.The RIAA spent an untold fortune fighting the Napster generation until Apple turned the rippers into buyers with iTunes. Apple made it easy to grab the latest music, anywhere, at any time and it turned a generation of music pirates into, at the very least, a generation aware of the alternatives.

Popcorn Time is just the start and it’s not the first to provide an easy way to consume pirated content. The entire program is on GitHub, where any developer can access the code and make it their own. Besides that, the program leans on an API released by a popular pirated movie site that has so far successfully evaded the MPAA’s wrath. Popcorn Time is simply a pretty face on a community-driven project.

There isn’t a single entity here that Hollywood’s lawyers can attack. The developers can go underground and distribute their creations under multiple names. They’re not charging for the program or incorporating ads. Popcorn Time is Napster for video without a company that is trying to turn it into a business. It is the epitome of online guerrilla warfare.

And Popcorn Time isn’t alone. A site called FliXanity essentially cloned Netflix’s look and streams pirated content, albeit at a really low resolution. Another called MovieHive is an Android app that’s a far cry from the selection and ease of use of Popcorn Time. Plus it has ads. But it works. It streams pirated content for free.

Popcorn Time has already forked. After an early scare, the old developers ceded to a new team because the pressure and attention was simply too much. The program is just that good.There are others. There will always be others.

Streaming is the future of both piracy and legitimate distribution. If Popcorn Time implodes again, another program will be built on top of the rubble and stand even taller than the first. The only thing that can slow its growth is Hollywood’s full embrace of the stream and, judging by the popularity of pirate services, it had better come soon.

In Fear

Production company: Studio Canal
2013
Low budget, only two characters
British Director (of Sherlock etc): Jeremy Lovering
£47,000 on the first weekend, it made its' money back

Manchester notes

Film territory: territory in which you buy the rights to distribute the film
Windows: period of time between a film being in the cinema and a film being released on DVD
Saturated: releases films in every multiplex cinema in the world over about 36 hours
Holdover: showing a film one week to see if it is a hit, if it is a hit you show it again a week later
If a film has 'legs' it keeps on running for a long time after the first weekend
DCP: digital cinema package - how the film is shown in the cinema
Major studies in Hollywood: 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Disney, Warner Studios, Columbia, Sony
Soft money: any form of tax relief/ subsides from the government to fund a film
Soft power: Hollywood sells the American lifestyle
Cultural test in the UK: submitting your film to a British institute and they run it through a test, 16 points to be a British film out of 31. If you're British you get government funding which is why a lot of films do it!
Property: starting of the process, companies buy any property they think has the potential to be a huge blockbuster
FDA: Film Distributor Association launchingfilms.com

Representation questions to ask:
Who is in control?
Whose values and ideas are spoken in the text?
What are the values and ideas that the text 'speaks' about?
How does it engage with issues?
Are characters simply 'types' or 'rounded individuals'?
What kind of world is re-presented to the audience?
What likelihood is there that different audiences will make different readings?